Sue

I see her at the grocery store hunched inside the bodycare aisle, squinting against the fine print on shampoo bottles. Flip flops and cut off shorts, a Warrant t-shirt, hands clutching a carton of Marlboro Lights and a six pack of Diet Pepsi. Vices that she once announced were the toxins of humanity. Soda and smoking are just cancer waiting to happen. So I quit. Smoking and beef and cheese, corn syrup and transfats. I learned the roast beef we shaved into paper thin slices for our customer’s American sandwiches was flayed from the hind quarters of innocent bovine. You don’t want to see what they do to those poor cows. She scrubbed her face with coconut oil in the employee bathroom. Her shiny ponytail bounced as she cantered between the fry and salad stations. The Eurythmics hummed while sopping up grease stains with a mop. Books on astrology, feet up on the table, yogic stretches between preparing curly fry orders. This isn’t my forever place. One day I’ll leave. Right now I’m here for the mountains. I follow her through the store from a distance, observing the shape of her petite body from behind, somehow thinner, more frail than I remember, hair stringier, duller. I call her name, once, twice, three times. She limps a little on the left. A car accident, a ski accident, death accident. Trauma keeps us from remembering our names. My hand taps her shoulder.  Her ruddy face turns to me, scarred and cracking under florescent lights. My body attempts to hug hers. She recoils, opens her mouth, chipped tooth protruding from red gums. Sorry lady, you’re mistaking me for my twin sister, happens sometimes.

The Yellow Chapel

At the end of this fine week, as part of my upcoming work as Minister of Unconventional Love, I'll be officiating the marriage of two dear friends, Anneka and Ruby. In my research for this special occasion, I've discovered discussions of love are largely for music and trees. There are only a few who can wrap words around free pumping heart valves without spilling blood all over the place. 

Alan Watts: 

Consider love as a spectrum. There is not, as it were just nice love and nasty love, spiritual love and material love, mature affection on the one hand and infatuation on the other. These are all forms of the same energy. And you have to take it and let it grow where you find it. When you find only one of these forms existing, if at least you will water it, the rest will blossom as well.

Emily Dickinson:

There is

no first, or last

in Forever –

It is Centre, there,

all the time

Clarice Lispector:

I get scared. But my heart's beating. The inexplicable love makes the heart beat faster. The sole guarantee is that I was born. You are a form of being I, and I a form of being you: those are the limits of my possibility. 

Whitman:

There we two, content, / happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.

A Dream

David Bowie is on the verge of death, invigorated by what life is left inside of him. He is part of a massive audience to a performance that won't ever start. He sits next to me. I touch his face, my hand rests on his cheek. His eyes are young and beautiful. He is clearly male and female. He tells me it's ok to be afraid. I tell him he's not the only one dying, we are all dying. We cry together. Love pours from both of us, from our fingers and eyes. I can see it trickle into the ether. He stands up and walks away to another row way in the back. I can't stop thinking about his face in my hands.